News Brief

A concession to exploit the vast mineral resources of the Dead Sea in Palestine is about to be given the Imperial Chemical Industries, according to reports in newspapers here. The deposits of potash bromine salts, gypsum and magnesium chloride are estimated to be worth 238 billion pounds (about 1,190 billion dollars), or about 290 times the British war debt to the United States.

The granting of the concession will be the signal to start one of the biggest commercial enterprises ever undertaken by any nation. It is expected here that it will start a continuous flow of surplus profits into the Government coffers of Palestine. Once the enterprise is placed on a paying basis it will enable the farmers of the British Empire to obtain potash at approximately half the current prices.

It will seriously challenge the Franco-German monopoly of potassium chloride, a prospect which may be a considerable factor in enabling the British to obtain good terms in the negotiations now under way with the German chemical industry to divide the world market.

The Imperial Chemical interests, a merger of practically the entire chemical industry of Britain, made by Brunner. Mond & Co., have been making extensive preparations for the task of exploitation. It is understood they will be ready to start work as soon as the Colonial Office permits them, which is expected any day. Their offices to-day refused to enlarge upon the prospects of the Palestine development prior to the announcement at the Colonial Office.

The prospect of tapping the long neglected treasure house of the Dead Sea is one of the direct results of the World War and one of the major acquisitions of wealth made by Britain as the result of the Versailles Treaty.

Turkey continuously refused to give the concession. Indeed allowing foreign enterprises to enter the Ottoman Empire generally only on the most restricted scale. It is stated that as soon as General Allenby captured Jerusalem in December, 1917, even while the Turks occupied all the northern half of Palestine, a British geologist began the investigation of the Dead Sea wealth.

The latest figures of what this geologist and others following him discovered in the territory, made a British mandate at Versailles, are indicated by one technical report made to the British Government and now available to the public.

It declares that the salt water lake, 340 square miles in area, the surface of which is 1,292 feet below the Mediteranean sea level, contains a table of potash containing 1.300 million tons, valued at fourteen billion pounds: bromine. 853 million tons, valued at fifty-two billion pounds; salt, 11.900 million tons, valued at 9.500 million pounds; gypsum, eighty-one million tons, worth twenty-four million pounds, and magnesium chloride, twenty-two billion tons, worth 165 billion pounds.

The natural conditions make it possible, it is claimed, to recover the salts cheaply in a state of high commercial purity within a few miles of ocean transport facilities. The concession is said not to grant an unrestricted monopoly, but to provide that the bulk of surplus profits will go to the Government of Palestine, partly for reinvestment in Palestinian industry. Another provision is said to be the distribution of fertilizer to the farmers of Palestine and Transjordania at cost price.

Other provisions likely to be incorporated in the concession are the donation of the entire recovery plant to the Palestine Government after a term of years, the establishment of vocational schools to train natives for subordinate posts in the industry and eventually perhaps for higher administrative and technical posts and the admission of the Palestine Government representatives to the board directing the whole project.